Postdoctoral Researcher – Mindfulness training and real-time neurofeedback. Center for Mindfulness, UMass Medical School, MA USA
The Center for Mindfulness at UMass Medical has an opening for a postdoctoral researcher to conduct research aimed at furthering our scientific understanding of mindfulness meditation and the extent to which real time neurofeedback can track and augment mindfulness training.
This is an exciting opportunity to participate in projects using real-time source-estimated EEG neurofeedback in conjunction with fMRI. We have recently identified biologically plausible brain targets of meditation (e.g. Brewer et al PNAS 2011, Garrison Neuroimage 2013), and have received R01 funding to examine whether neurofeedback from specific brain regions associated with meditation can augment mindfulness acquisition.
The successful candidate will contribute to these efforts by providing analysis of current datasets and developing her/his own mentored projects. The candidate will work in an interdisciplinary team of physicians, clinicians and basic scientists.
The successful candidate should be creative, able to work as part of a multi-disciplinary group with physicians, psychologists, engineers and computer scientists, and should have excellent communication skills in English and good writing skills. Experience with fMRI techniques and analysis is important, and an interest in therapeutic applications of meditation and mindfulness training is preferred.
Preferred Qualifications for this position include: • PhD in neuroscience, psychology, biomedical engineering or related field • Experience with fMRI analysis (FSL, AFNI, SPM etc.) • Experience with EEG application and analysis • Basic programming experience (C++, bash etc.) • A record of publication and/or conference presentations
The qualified candidate would begin work as early as May 2014.
Qualified candidates should submit their CV and three references to: Judson Brewer MD PhD (judson.brewer@yale.edu), Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine.
The Center for Mindfulness was founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979, and now has over 20,000 graduates of its Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program (see http://www.umassmed.edu/cfm/index.aspx for more details). Now housed in its own building, it has recently expanded to include core research facilities to bring together clinicians and scientists for truly collaborative basic and translational research. Judson Brewer MD PhD (http://psychiatry.yale.edu/people/judson_brewer.profile) will join the Center for Mindfulness as Director of Research on January 1, 2014 to head this research core.